baby be friends with you.

It's a beautiful night, at the end of a frustrating day. The moon is conspicuously hanging out like a bulbous, ill-disguised troll behind too-thin strips of clouds. The air smells like wood burning in fireplaces, and it's cool for Florida, but - being honest with ourselves now - it's still warm.

Bob Dylan is singing "all I really wanna do-o-o-o is, baby, be friends with you," while a certain herding dog demonstrates grave concern about the source of that yodeling. Friends are calling my attention lately. Calling me away, I think, from the inclination to label a given day, or anything, as frustrating.

Like today: I all-out forgot two meetings I had fully planned on the day before. And messing up things for which you can't turn back the clock is frustrating! But a friend commiserated about all the things she's missed too, and reminded me how small those mistakes turn out to be against the backdrop of all you usually get right. Another friend suggested how to mend things with the folks I'd stood up.

Like last week: defending a dissertation proposal is stressful, and is just part of the stream of challenges that keeps coming allll the time. Sometimes I worry the persistent work will erode my sense of fun! What if I forget? But a weekend away with a friend who pointed out her surprise that I "play as hard as I work" (and who should win trophies or something for her own ability to do exactly that) let me have a couple days to remember no matter how many papers I write, I can still bring the ruckus.

Like other friendships. As a girl who's historically thrown her friendship around every which way - to highly variable outcomes - I've spent a lot of time working at people with whom my efforts don't always pay off. I still get frustrated when they don't. But - but. I'm starting to learn. Those friendships that stay have a way of drowning out frustration at what doesn't stay. Where one attempt at connecting fails, there is a net of other connections already there to let me know what I'm really looking for. And how incredibly blessed I already am.

It's fine when it doesn't work out. See, you launch enough of your little filaments (as Uncle Walt put it) and plenty of those gossamer threads will catch somewhere. The ones that need to will. The bridges you'd probably rather not form are usually the ones that won't anyway. And there's a beauty in that. Some strange, benevolent efficiency of loving, maybe. We find our anchors where we belong.

Not to say I won't keep flinging out proverbial filaments at just about whatever crosses my path, including any number of long shots. Some things are entirely ingrained. :) But there is comfort in being reminded that whatever efforts fail, there is a web of friendships ready to hold you if you'll look for it. And if you keep on flinging: well, not everything will work, but there will keep on being something - someone - there to break the fall.